The Best of Toxic Waste

Some people will tell you that toxic waste is a bad thing. That it’s unnatural, bad for the environment. That may be true, but it’s also a ridiculously narrow perspective to have. A perspective for stupid people. Toxic waste is responsible for some of the greatest things in popular culture. Having toxic waste in your story always leads to something amazing happening. Let’s celebrate this and take a look at the very best of Toxic Waste!

The 1980s were the Golden Age of Toxic Waste. Troma’s Toxic Avenger (1984) opened the floodgates for people being affected by toxic waste in the movies, while a short time later the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon put animal toxic waste victims into the hearts of children everywhere. There were toy playsets where you could cover your action figures with toxic waste. Sure, it was called “slime”, but we all knew that’s PC talk for “toxic waste”. Toxic waste was absolutely everywhere, and we all loved it.

A happier time.

Before we begin this short list, I would like to mention that no, we won’t be listing Toxic Avenger or TMNT in here. For all the cultural impact these two had, listing them would be a little too obvious, and obvious=boring. Being exposed to toxic waste content of any kind should never be boring, so while these are great franchises, we’ll be looking at the less famous toxic waste greats.

Matt Murdock is walking down the street, sees a blind old man almost get hit by a truck delivering toxic waste somewhere, jumps in to rescue the man, and ends up with toxic waste in his eyes. It turns him blind as a bat, but his other senses get real good. Then other things happen. Not involving toxic waste anymore, not nearly as exciting, but he ends up with a 50 year-long comicbook career as “Daredevil”, the most depressed superhero ever.

Still, if it wasn’t for toxic waste, we would never have “Daredevil: The Man Without Fear” comics. We’d have “Matt Murdock: Ginger Lawyer” comics, at best. What’s also interesting here, is that Daredevil’s origin story happened 20 years before the toxic waste heyday. The story tells us that toxic waste was nowhere near as potent in the 1960s as it was in the 1980s. Getting blinded and receiving super powers are basically the “Toxic Waste Lite” exposure symptoms. Had Matt Murdock’s story happened in the ‘80s, he could end up with anything - from his head permanently merged with the toxic waste truck (or the old blind man), to the top part of his head completely dissolving.

You may not have heard about Francis Teri’s 1990 horror The Suckling (AKA The Sewage Baby), but if you’re interested in toxic waste at all, then this movie should be on your “Must Watch” list.

The Suckling is about a teenage couple wanting to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. To get this done on the budget, they do it in an amateur abortion “clinic”, located in the back of a sleazy Brooklyn brothel.

Because Francis Teri hates good taste, the baby gets aborted with a coat hanger, and then the fetus is dumped into the toilet and flushed. Right after we see it falling down the pipes and bouncing its way to the sewers, we find out there’s leaking barrels of toxic waste stored right outside the brothel! As the toxic waste drips down the drain, it falls on the fetus and begins mutating it at an insane speed. The piping-dwelling Suckling is born.

The brothel’s toxic waste gives the baby some impressive shapeshifting abilities, as it soon covers the entire brothel in a placenta-like thing, and proceeds to travel through the pipes and kill everybody inside (sometimes through the toilet, so if getting attacked through the toilet is a major phobia for you, you shouldn’t watch The Sewage Baby). It’s a brothel full of degenerates versus the piping-dwelling Suckling.

It might be a gruesome, terribly-made movie, but definitely one of the most interesting points in the rich history of toxic waste in popular culture. It’s like Francis Teri heard of the TMNT origin and thought “Wouldn’t it be great if it was an aborted fetus instead?”. That he actually followed through on his vision, is nothing short of remarkable.

The 1989 Tim Burton movie Batman features Michael Keaton as Batman and Jack Nicholson as a slightly more eccentric version of himself.

During his first encounter with the Batman, Jack falls from a ledge and lands in a vat of toxic waste. As is usually the case, toxic waste completely changes his life. What is a little unusual, however, is the effect the waste has on Jack. Turns out, that if you use toxic waste on Jack Nicholson, you just get a bleached, botoxed version of Jack Nicholson, with a taste for more colorful clothes. And Prince records.

Not only is toxic waste a crucial part of the movie Joker’s origin, it’s also taken directly from the comics. Joker is probably the most iconic and well-known villain in comics, and he wouldn’t even be the Joker without toxic waste. If that’s not one of toxic waste’s greatest moments and a testament to its cultural importance, then brother, I don’t know what to tell you.

Toxic waste also appeared in Burton’s second Batman movie, but it played a smaller role there. It was just there so the Penguin could blackmail Christopher Walken. As the Batman movies went on, there was less and less toxic waste in them, which also explains the decline in quality.

Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop is the greatest movie ever made. You shouldknowthis by now. Probably my favorite scene in the whole movie is near the end, when RoboCop confronts Boddicker’s gang in the old steel mill. When Emil, one of Boddicker’s goons, tries to ram RoboCop with his truck, Murphy very slowly walks out of the way, and the car hits a vat of toxic waste.

Now this is some industrial strength toxic waste. This isn’t the shit Matt Murdock got in his eye. The effects are instantaneous. Emil gets washed right out the back of his truck, hits the ground, and before he can say anything other than “HHYYYOOOOOOOOUUUUHH!… OOOOOOOOUUUGH! Help… me…” he turns into a full on toxic waste victim. His clothes are melting away, his eye is popping in a weird direction, his lip covers his whole chin, and his fingers turn into droopy, disjointed sausages.

Any other director would have left that whole scene at RoboCop slowly killing off the bad guys, getting debris dropped at him, and stabbing Boddicker in the neck with his data spike/middle finger, but that’s exactly why Verhoeven is the best director ever. That whole meeting, my sources say, went something like:

Verhoeven: “…and then one of the goons drives into a vat of toxic waste!”

Studio Executive: “…toxic waste, Paul?”

Verhoeven: “Yeah. It’s a steel mill. Toxic waste is left right there, right on the side of the road.”

Studio Executive: [Unsure] “Okay…”

Verhoeven: “And then he falls out of the truck and he’s all like [Verhoeven, hunched over, tongue sticking out, eyes rolling to the back his head, arms out] ‘HHYYYOOOOOOOOUUUUHH!… Heeelp meee…”

This would still be a complete masterpiece of a movie without this scene, but by adding toxic waste into the mix, Verhoeven just pushes it so far into “classic” territory it’s incredible. The sounds Emil makes when he’s going all melty? That scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. This is toxic waste at its absolute finest. Emil is so toxic, it’s intoxicating.

We love you, Emil!

Soon after, Emil dies. When Boddicker’s car hits him, the impact pretty much liquefies poor Emil. Antonowsky may have died right there, but he will live on forever in the annals of toxic waste history.

Sadly, as the ‘90s went on, toxic waste’s presence in popular culture became smaller and smaller. In the 2000s, the go-to explanation for all sorts of mutations was usually science experiments gone wrong – some kind of fiddling with the DNA, genetic modifications, and other things that are obviously much more boring and convoluted. Hopefully this list will remind us once again why toxic waste is such an important part of our lives and culture. It’s 2015. Bring on the toxic waste!What do you think of our list? What is your favorite use of toxic waste in movies, comics, or otherwise? Would you like to be exposed to toxic waste? Let us know in the comments!